“U.S. stocks fell, after last week’s drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, on concern a European Union summit will fail to tame the region’s debt crisis,” Rita Nazareth reports for Bloomberg.

“All 10 groups in the S&P 500 slid as energy and financial shares had the biggest losses. Exxon Mobil (XOM) Corp., Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) slid more than 1.8 percent,” Nazareth reports. “The S&P 500 slid 1.7 percent to 1,312.49 at 12:21 p.m. New York time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 150.95 points, or 1.2 percent, to 12,489.83. Trading in S&P 500 companies was down 11 percent from the 30-day average at this time of day.”

Nazareth reports, “Chancellor Angela Merkel hardened her resistance to euro- area debt sharing, setting Germany on a collision course with its allies at a summit on June 28. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras accepted the resignation of Finance Minister Vassilios Rapanos. Cyprus informed European authorities today of its decision to request financial assistance from the euro area’s bailout funds, the government said in an e-mailed statement.”

Since President Obama took office [in January 2009], federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year. Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty

I love the following section of the report, because I have an affinity for common sense:

The study faults the way poverty programs are designed, saying that the increase in spending and largely unchanged poverty rate showed that the issue is not a matter of money, but a matter of what the programs aim to achieve.

“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable – giv­ing poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth – rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.”

Instead, the study recommends refocusing anti-poverty efforts on keeping people in school, discouraging out-of-wedlock births, and encouraging people to get a job – even if that job is a low-wage one.

“It would make sense therefore to shift our anti-poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to those who are living in poverty to efforts to create the condi­tions and incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty.

“And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.” Mark 14:3-7.

Spending all the money you can on the poor is not always the best or most responsible use of that money. And using it for other things is not always selfish or unkind.

And those who push for money to be spent on the poor (in this case it was Judas Iscariot) do not always do so out of compassion or kindness, but many times they do it for appearances or for control of the flow of the money.

Fair enough. Both Mark and Matthew (Matt. 26:6-13) record that the disciples (plural) were upset about the waste, and not specifically Judas. I infer that he was one of the indignant from the continuing story in both accounts. It was immediately after this that he went to the priests to get a bounty for turning in the Lord. (Matt. 26:14-16, Mark 14:10-11). I would argue that perhaps this waste of expensive ointment sent Judas over the edge. He was, in fact the keeper of the money (John 13:29).

Thanks for holding me accountable. Yes, I do call myself a Bible guy, but not the only one… apparently.

When an expensive ointment was poured on Jesus’ feet, some felt it was wasted. Judas was particularly upset, and said that it would have been better used if it had been sold, and the money GIVEN poor people. Jesus said that you should help the poor when you can, but that this had to be done to Him to anoint Him unto His death. And Judas’ intentions weren’t especially pure, seeing as he was the treasurer, and felt he was the best judge of how to manage the ministry’s funds.

Much of the world spends trillions on social programs, and claims that they do it out of compassion. They use language that attempt to lay guilt on someone who seeks other ways to help rather than simply giving money to poor people. If someone opposes hand-outs and entitlements, they are labeled as cruel and heartless, while them giving a gov’t. stipend seems to make them the hero. The lesson here is that even Jesus, arguably the most compassionate man to ever live, did not think it was always necessary to give freebies to the poor. Sometimes, that money needs to meet some other purpose.

Europe is in the current crisis, and the US is not far behind, because of the social programs. And people are so addicted to them, that they riot in the streets when bankrupt governments try to cut them with austerity measures. We all need to cut our spending on entitlements. It’s going to be painful, but taking from Peter to give to Paul is fine until Peter is broke. Then there is no one to take from.

And if you don’t believe in Jesus, or in the Bible, you’d better believe in someone else who can feed 5000 with 5 loaves of bread, because tough times are a-coming!

Actually, Jesus was anything but a bleeding heart liberal, socialist. He is going to reward people individually according to their work, “And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” Revelation 22:12

He advocated armed defense of your private possessions, “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace:” Luke 11:21.

He advocated profitable enterprise, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Matthew 25:14-30

Jesus did tell his disciples to pay their taxes “Render to Caesar…” (Matt. 22:16-22). But, “And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.” Luke 3:10-14. So, yes He advocated charitable activity on the part of the individual, but he also commanded the tax collectors to not overtax, and the soldiers (police, etc.) to be fair and just and honest, and not to go on strike, etc. to force pay increases.

And it’s a mistake to garner the teachings of Jesus from the “red letters” of the Scripture only, since He authored the whole Bible. The Scriptures teach private ownership; working to eat; not burdening the community with the support of your relatives, but taking responsibility to provide for not only your immediate family, but also for widowed aunts for example (1 Tim. 5); He spoke against extra-marital sex, calling it “sin” and “evil” and telling people to stop (Mark 25:20-23).

That’s not your typical liberal socialist platform.

As to whether Jesus uses Mac or PC… good question. Considering that the streets of glory are of gold, I would think His computing hardware would not be cheap plastic. However, He does say that He “will open the Windows® of Heaven” and pour out a blessing. Of course, He would likely be doing so in Parallels.

After 50 years of failure and more than half a trillion dollars flushed away to maintain the status quo, the U.S. can decide to properly execute a war on poverty while executing actual war(s).

However, if the U.S. actually shifted anti-poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to efforts to create the condi­tions and incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty, then the Democrats would immediately cease to exist or, lat least, never get elected.

That is why the Dems will fight free the poor from poverty tooth and nail, even in the face of their own wasteful, failed “War of Poverty.”

The Democrat party is today’s slaveowner, the perpetuators of slavery.

See, what the poor lack is a good PR firm, and a coordinated lobbying effort. Then, their benefits would be called ‘subsidies’ or ‘bailouts’, something that the corporate-run federal government knows all about and could easily understand.

Unlike “X”, I do care about really helping the poor. Unlike some Dems who seem to tailor “programs” that accomplish nothing to keep the poor around forever. Generation after generation. Guaranteed votes, of course.

I keep waiting for the majority of U.S. African Americans to wake up. Slavery by another name (government dependency) is still slavery.

The more people doing well on their own, the better.

Like the study says:

The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable – giv­ing poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth – rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.

It would make sense therefore to shift our anti-poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to those who are living in poverty to efforts to create the condi­tions and incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty.

I’d be very happy to put my taxes to work for real progress for a change, not just keeping the disadvantaged and their offspring treading water and checking the mailbox for the subsistence living check/foodstamps forever.

That’s right, I want hope and change and progress, but real hope and change and progress, not an empty campaign slogan devised for an empty suit spouting a tired ideology that’s a proven failure everywhere it’s been tried.

The above is right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (Obama Playbook 2012):

RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Genes seem to encode for all manner of personality traits, including the desire to work hard. There will always be lazy people. If they want to lay around and be poor, fine, let them be poor.

But if you actually pay people to lay around and be poor (free public housing, free food, free money, free healthcare for their drug-induced health issues), you’re gonna get a whole lot of that sort of behavior. And you’ll get even more poor people to take care of because being paid to stay home and do nothing productive leads to extraordinarily high fertility rates.

Your Ignorance is blinding. 90% of welfare recipients are already working full-time jobs and don’t make enough to support themselves due to lack of union support, pay inequity and tax system that favors the 1%.

Well, Jim; you only undermined your own point by starting out your post with a lie. Your allegation that 90 percent of people on Welfare are employed doesn’t even pass the ‘grin’ test. It’s hard to find good statistics, but the Urban Institute in their study Where Are They Now? What States’ Studies of People Who Left Welfare Tell Us, write that “Cuyahoga County and Maryland reported similar employment rates for the first quarter off welfare: 55 percent and 51 percent.”

That’s the percentage who were employed after getting off Welfare. And you come here and shoot yourself in the foot with a ludicrous statistic that even flies in the face of logic and what Welfare is all about.

The only thing that is “blinding” is your arrogance, which comes with nutcase liberalism and has the hallmark tendency to place blame their misfortunes on everyone but themselves.

The ranks of the unemployed are far and wide disproportionately represented by people who drop out of high school and expect employers to be anxious to pay them top dollar—or at all. That is a simple fact and even nut-case liberalism—intent on dictating to others how they may think and how they may express their thoughts.

Last time I looked around, I can’t find one single employed person (aka, hard-working individual) who put his boot into the back of some teenager’s neck and forced him to try drugs and drop out of school. They have only themselves to blame for making that decision to drop out of school that first day and try drugs that first time.

I know I wasn’t responsible for their poor decisions so my taxes—and those of every other hard-working American—shouldn’t be paying for those poor choices. The only “Welfare” I see fit is to ensure the hungry children of idiots like you and all those lazy people who can’t even stay in school are fed; after all, they had zero choice in who their parents were.

In spite of their current problems, many countries in Europe have higher standards of education, health, life expectancy and wellbeing compared to the US. Places like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and more have NOTHING like the widespread poverty, slums, lack of education, homelessness and vast populations of disenfranchised seen over large parts of the US.

@ Greg L “if you actually pay people to lay around and be poor”…… you REALLY need to get out more… as in look at some of those countries I named, which by your theories should ALL be cesspools of post-apocolyptic social collapse.

Where I live, the conservative government did a survey of welfare recipients, expecting to find data to support their “layabout, social parasite” theories. To their credit, they freely admitted that their own surveys showed that most welfare recipients would love nothing more than getting off welfare, that most DID get off when they could, and that most long-term recipients were incapable of working and really needed that support.

Add Singapore to this list which is a country run heavily by government intervention. Great education, phenomenal public health and wellness programs (called welfare by some in the States). Add to that, very low crime and overall harmony. A great model for societies. The rich are rich and the poor are properly cared for. Everyone benefits and no one is left out and the government helps those out of work to find work.

Here, our government system needs everyone working for it, including the Republican haters.

Perhaps one could theorize that the rich in Singapore realize they are better off if the population around them can actually afford their goods and services… that a vibrant middle-class is a good thing. The US, I believe, originated the term “kleptocracy”, but, ironically, that is more and more what the US has become — a kleptocracy — politically-arranged pathological greed and thievery.

A rather unsubtle point is to look at what strong conservatism actually brings. When one considers the staunchly conservative states, I think that it is not coincidence (sarcasm) that we see massive poverty, incredible lack of education and a much greater than proportional share of violent crime. Hmmmm.

Singapore is also the size of a postage stamp. Very easy to control. The U.S.A. is 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,675 km2) and made up of 50 states which share sovereignty with the federal government. It is a federal constitutional republic.

SIngapore is a is a parliamentary republic. Trial by jury was entirely abolished in 1970 leaving judicial assessment performed wholly by judgeship. Singapore has penalties that include judicial corporal punishment in the form of caning for rape, rioting, vandalism, and some immigration offenses. There is a mandatory death penalty for murder, and for certain drug-trafficking and firearms offenses. Amnesty International has said that some legal provisions conflict with the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and that Singapore has “possibly the highest execution rate in the world relative to its population.”

Good luck instituting Singaporean-style government in the U.S.A. We, thank God and thank the founders, are armed for a reason.

Well, let’s see… I’ve spent time in Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and Austria. In fact, if you want a fine pizza, I know a fine pizzeria at the Citadel that has a commanding view of Budapest.

As for “social parasite”, the government makes them that way. As I wrote above, the unemployed are disproportionately represented by those who drop out of high school as well as those who get on drugs. That’s a simple fact and you best not try to explain that uncomfortable truth away.

I’ve yet to see one single news item where some hard-working construction guy was accused of chaining some low-life to his bed so he had to drop out of high school.

Are there many contractors in the Carmel area who are hiring less-than-ideally-documented, citizenship-challenged workers from north or south of the border? If so, do you think that is tending to depress pay in the construction field?

Executive wages, on the other hand, continue an exponential trend. This is wrong on many levels — first of all, because it’s not free market, the uppermost wages at publicly-traded firms represent a self-ratcheting and thoroughly corrupt mechanism that lacks any real accountability.

It is simply not true that the richest few are “self-made men”, nor that shareholders have any significant power. Over and over again we see hard-working entrepreneur lose touch with reality and all the people who helped him succeed in business, and he just starts skimming all the cream for himself with the help of an out-of-touch board compensation committee — or if he’s honest, he steps aside while the professionals take over the company and line their pockets with everything they can take.

For example, from Apple’s 2012 Proxy statement:
Total annual compensation AVERAGE for last 3 years, which evens out those handy little one-time stock awards and signing bonuses:

Remember, these aren’t inventors or founders of the company, they are guys hired to run it. And sure, they do a great job. But no human being on this planet, not even Tim Cook, actually earns a moving 3-year average of $400,670 per day (that’s $34k per hour assuming a 12-hour workday with no vacation).

To state otherwise is utter BS. Tim Cook is compensated that much not because of what he does, but because corporate pay practices over-reward the cheerleaders at the top and under-reward the team that executes well. It’s a pyramid structure with sickeningly exponentially curved pay scales. There is no justification that could possibly defend corporate pay — free market, my ass.

do please explain specifically what was imported from Europe that you dislike. As far as i can see, the only large tangible change to Federal law or policy from the prior administration has been a kludged health-care reform bill drafted by the insurance industry — and that was imported from Romney-land, not Europe.

Since Obama took office [in January 2009], federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year. Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty

The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable – giv­ing poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth – rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.

It would make sense therefore to shift our anti-poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to those who are living in poverty to efforts to create the condi­tions and incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty.

Anyhow, since the topic raised is the European Economic Crisis, WTF does Obama or US social welfare programs have to do with it?

Next, what are you rabid Obama haters going to do when Willard (not the Rat) “Mitt” RawMoney loses large this fall? The only demographic he leads in are old white men and when they figure out what a fraud he is it will truly be over.